Luciano Berio, "El Mar la Mar"

Continued Notes From RCA ARL1-0037:

El Mar la Mar was not the first work in which Berio attempted to evoke the flavor of folk music, but it was one of the very first pieces in which he really found himself as a composer. Most of his earlier works, including Magnificat (1948), Concertina (1950) and the Two Pieces for violin and piano of 1951, are regarded by him as "exorcisms"-a means of ridding himself of the influence of such 20th-century masters as Bartok, Stravinsky and Hindemith. El Mar la Mar, on the other hand, is a completely individual piece, even though it combines its origin in folk music (these are particularly noticeable in the inclusion of an accordion in the instrumental clothing) with the seeds of the serial technique that was to preoccupy Berio, as well as other outstanding composers of his generation, during the early '50s.

The texts of El Mar la Mar are taken from "Un Marinero en Tierra" ("A Sailor on Land"), an early collection by the exiled Spanish poet, Rafael Alberti. As in many of Alberti's poems, their central symbol is that of the sea. The three texts Berio chose play phonetically on the Spanish word "mar'- the first wistfully, the second dramatically and the third humorously. They are scored for soprano and mezzo-soprano, with a small instrumental ensemble consisting of piccolo, two clarinets, accordion, harp, cello and double bass.

Rafael Alberti